Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, Professor Applebaum and Professor Pankowski for being here with us today.
Professor Applebaum, I have the pleasure of serving on the trilateral commission with David Sanger, and I think he was ahead of his time with The Perfect Weapon in regard to the evaluation of cybersecurity and cybercrime. I certainly know that he meant it more in regard to the destruction of infrastructure and the manipulation of data as opposed to more manipulation of data and fake news as we've seen today.
We are moving towards the 2019 federal election here. I'm in the opposition. I'm the shadow minister for democratic institutions, and of course, I'm very concerned about the integrity of our electoral processes and our 2019 election. I would say that we are in a position here where we can identify the players in terms of foreign nationals, hacktivists as identified in the Canadian security establishment document of 2017. We can identify their motivations in terms of global spheres of influence, natural resources, the environmental causes such as this, but the question of course remains how. I'm very interested in what you talked about today in regard to the tech companies having very little incentive to step forward.
I know the present government has had little if any success in terms of their self-regulation, even in applying similar standards which these social media platforms apply for themselves in other nations.
However, there is of course the delicate balance, as you mentioned, of freedom of speech with the integrity of democratic institutions, as well as electoral processes. I'm very interested in a few things that you mentioned. You listed some specific examples. I was wondering if you could summarize those again, please. As well, you talked about time to apply regulation from other spheres. What other historical industrial spheres serve as a good framework for this? I'll start with that.
I'm also very interested in this public interest algorithm. When we have members of CSIS and the RCMP in front of us, I certainly see their postings for positions online and I can't help but wonder if they shouldn't make a trip to San Jose or go to the head office of Fortnite to try to poach.
Perhaps I could have your comments first in regard to that list that you mentioned previously, and what other industrial spheres you can take from.
Finally, I'll mention that I was a member of the Canadian foreign service for 15 years so this, as well, is of very much interest to me.
Thank you, Professor Applebaum.